THE E3 ANCHOR FARMS BUSINESS CONCEPT GETS REVISED

By George Z Goliati 
Pic: A remembrance photo with the newly formed Umodzi (Women) Credit group after a training on transplanting onion on 10 April 2021


The testing of the e-coordinated export-oriented ecological (e3) anchor farms business model for agro-commodity aggregation, through Midule Farmers Organisation, had some poor results in the past four months. Mainly, the poor outcomes noticed were low membership participation than expected and mismanagement of financial resources by some executive management members - which indicated that the leadership/management was not strengthened as principally expected. 


It was realised that low membership was mainly influenced by lack of trust in some of the executive management members - to most likely mismanage funds - a matter which eventually got experienced. 


This case re-affirmed how serious the issue of fraudulent activities or lack of transparency and accountability of farmer organisations leaderships is top-most factor preventing collective farming and marketing of smallholder farmers in Malawi. 


As a result, a number of strategies have been developed to ensure trusted and reliable governance or leadership is put in place. One of the most key strategies is the consultation of an independent diversified key stakeholders panel on compliance and risk management. 


This panel of different key stakeholders (with maximum diversity) in the community will be consulted to assess, recommend and endorse farmer organisations' constitution (by-laws, penalties) and the elected leaders so that it has strong financial principles, democracy and almost every community member can trust its leadership. 
We also had problems with implementing the following;

i. Digital extension and monitoring - resulting to inefficient and unsustainable commercial production at the anchor farm
ii. Efficient diverse and low-cost ecological (climate-adaptive) farming and small businesses at household level (for food-nutrition and incomes security)


These problems were attributed to poor budget allocation and lack of commitment to plans. This will be addressed by ensuring these areas are given much attention and priority just as the commercial produce. 


In order to materialise the newly developed strategies, I left Midule Farmers Organisation as a Business Development Manager and a member. Now I am preparing to launch the long-designed private aggregating and anchor farming enterprise, Umodzi Farms. 


To make sure a successful and effective social impact business model, I am now focusing on women and youths since are the most needy of the support (integration of smallholder farmers into commercial value chains and sustainable agri-food systems). 


On 10th April, 2021, I engaged a new farmer group by the name Umodzi (Women) Credit group under the same villages around Midule Irrigation Scheme. 13 women under this group registered for the partnership, of which 12 were new. The rise in the number of participants evidenced how untrusted leaderships are negatively affecting women participation in collective farming and marketing. 


On this day, we conducted a training on transplanting onions. The women will provide labour for the exercise and will have to save from their earnings. They will also be trained in climate-adaptive diverse farming and entrepreneurship, and collective farming and marketing. 


According to their ability to save, develop business plans and engage in collective farming and marketing, they will be provided with small credit to start-off their small businesses, onion seedlings to start-off collective farming and finally aggregation services to collectively market their grains, especially maize by end of April 2021. 

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